Wet People

During the George W. Bush administration, liberals became so unhinged that a psychological condition called Bush Derangement Syndrome was diagnosed. Years later, some on the Left still suffer from it. The phrase has been turned to other uses, but W. has been the undisputed champion when it comes to bringing out the insanity in political opponents.

Until now. We saw it here in Minnesota, and now we are experiencing it on the national stage: there is something about Michele Bachmann that causes liberals to make fools of themselves. I can’t explain it, but it’s true.

The latest evidence is an appearance that Michele made on August 5 at the Spirit Midwest Christian Music Festival in West Des Moines, Iowa. Stacy McCain was there and shot this video. It had been raining all afternoon, and Michele began by asking the audience, which was soaking wet, “Who likes wet people? Yeah, that’s right–because we have the God of the winds and the rain.” She went on to say that she was not there to talk politics, and she testified to her Christian faith. You can watch all of that if you want to, but for purposes of this post you just need to watch the beginning:

McCain posted his video, whereupon it was promptly stolen by liberals. Not just stolen, but misrepresented. Let McCain explain what happened:

This is so shocking I don’t know how to begin to describe it. Regular readers will recall that on Friday, Aug. 5, I covered an appearance by Michele Bachmann at the Spirit Midwest Christian Music Festival in West Des Moines, Iowa. It had been raining all afternoon before Bachmann arrived and gave her Christian testimony, which I recorded on video and posted the next day.

Some vicious monster ripped off my video and edited it, so that when Bachmann begins by jokingly asking the crowd, “Who likes wet people?” — because everybody was soaked to the bone, including me — instead there is a caption, “Who likes white people?”

Ken Layne of Wonkette then spread that smear all around the Internet.

To which many have replied, “Wonkette? What? Is Wonkette still in business?” It is hard to imagine a publication going downhill when it loses Ana Marie Cox, but that is what happened to Wonkette. Stacy McCain threatened to sue, and the goof who originally pirated and misrepresented his video apologized, apparently hoping to avoid legal liability.

This is where it gets interesting. Liberals were so overcome with Bachmann Derangement Syndrome that, even though it is perfectly obvious on the video that Michele says “wet people,” and even though there is nothing whatsoever in her speech about race, and even though McCain had pointed out the “white people” lie, and even though the originator of that lie had already recanted, Democrats continued to propagate the lie! Among other things, they invented out of whole cloth the claim that a band called “White People Soul Power”–non-existent, as far as I know–had performed before Bachmann spoke.

Gossip columnist Perez Hilton posted a version of the video, as shown in this screen shot from McCain’s site:

But that isn’t the worst. CBS News “reporter” Michelle Castillo was happy to participate in the hoax: she compiles a periodic list of the top 5 viral videos, and made Bachmann saying “Who likes white people?” number one on her list. Castillo wrote:

Everything that comes out of Michele Bachmann’s mouth is gold. A new video has her asking a crowd of people, “Who likes white people?” It doesn’t make any sense, so many explanations are surfacing from “White People Soul Power” being the band that played before, to the fact it was raining and Bachmann is asking about “wet” people.

CBS, understandably embarrassed at having the company’s institutional bias so grotesquely revealed, has now backtracked:

(CORRECTION: We have amended the statement to make it clear that Bachmann did not say “Who likes white people?” The original paragraph read as follows: Everything that comes out of Michele Bachmann’s mouth is gold. A new video has her asking a crowd of people, “Who likes white people?” It doesn’t make any sense, so many explanations are surfacing from “White People Soul Power” being the band that played before to the fact it was raining and Bachmann is asking about “wet” people.)

What causes liberals to make fools of themselves this way? I don’t know; what can you say? They are deranged. There is an obvious parallel between this fiasco and the better-known incident when Democrats claimed that Tea Partiers hurled racial epithets at Democratic Congressmen at a rally in Washington. In that case, it became evident that the Democratic Congressmen were lying when 1) of the dozens of videos that were shot of the event, not one contained the alleged language, and 2) Andrew Breitbart offered $100,000 to anyone who could produce such an audio or video recording, and the prize went unclaimed. Here, as in that case, the Democrats fabricated claims of racism out of thin air. The motive was the same: Democrats apparently think that they can get mileage out of alleging, in a classic non sequitur, that those who want to reduce the scope of an overweening federal government and get the country’s fiscal house in order are “racists.”

But in that instance, Tea Partiers were called on to prove a negative. What is uniquely bizarre about the Bachmann incident is that the video is right there before us. Bachmann clearly says “wet people,” and yet liberals, posting that very (pirated) video, claim that she said “white people” even though 1) she obviously didn’t, and 2) the alleged reference to “white people” makes no freaking sense whatsoever. So what can we conclude? Are liberals so deranged that they are going deaf? Or is the sight of Michele Bachmann professing her religious faith enough to reduce CBS reporters and other liberals to shuddering, incoherent wrecks?